I like this book quite a bit. It's not as great as Pyle's Robin Hood (the best!) or his fantastic Book of Pirates, but still good fun. A young lad comes of age in the 14th century, becoming a great knight along the way. Includes some fine plates with Pyle's illustrations, black-and-white except for the frontispiece. ( )

Enjoyable YA adventure, set at the height of the age of chivalry, but written with the stong moral force (and occasional moralizing) of the Victorian era. ( )

I was 12 or 13 when I read this. I don't think I could properly appreciate it at the time, culturally speaking. It offers interesting insight into life at the time, through an act of historical fiction. What I noticed most about the book, at the time, was the author's writing style. He could write a sentence the length of an entire paragraph, and yet have it be grammatically correct. ( )

You really need to read the unabridged edition. There is another one that was watered down to be easier to understand. Don't read that one!

This would make a great movie. It reminds me of a cross between A Knights Tale (movie) and The Hedge Knight (book). ( )

A long, long time ago...grammar school, I believe, we were told that it is generally considered bad form to attempt to write in accented dialog. The exception was if you were very, very good.

Howard Pyle is not very good.

I'm pretty sure he made up a bunch of his own words by adding -eth at the end of nearly every verb in character dialog. This was distracting to no end. The story, set in medieval times and focusing on squires and the knights they serve, was completely lost in this lame attempt at contemporary dialog.

I like reading Shakespeare. Pyle is no Shakespeare. Instead of period flavor, the result is complete frustration. ( )